Chaos Computer Club Breaks Apple’s TouchID

The biometrics hacking team of the Chaos Computer Club has successfully bypassed the biometric security of Apple’s TouchID by using everyday means. A fingerprint of the phone user, photographed from a glass surface, was enough to create a fake finger that could unlock an iPhone 5s secured with TouchID.

Apple launched its new iPhone 5s with a fingerprint sensor, which was supposedly much more secure than previous fingerprint technologies.

In reality, Apple’s sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake”, said the hacker with the nickname Starbug, who performed the critical experiments that led to the successful circumvention of the fingerprint locking. “As we have said now for more than years, fingerprints should not be used to secure anything. You leave them everywhere, and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints.”

The process, requires a 2400 DPI photograph of someone’s fingerprint from a glass surface, which is then laser printed at 1200 DPI and used to create a thin latex sheet that serves as the fake print. You can watch the video below:

[youtube id=”HM8b8d8kSNQ” width=”100%” height=”300px”]

However, most iPhone 5s users may want to consider fingerprint access as an option for convenience rather than security.